JFK Visited Hanford 50 Years Ago, Trying To De-Escalate Cold War

Fifty years ago Thursday, President John F. Kennedy stepped off a Marine helicopter into the dry heat of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington. He was there to see the massive new N Reactor. The reactor was the first to produce both plutonium and power in the U.S. As Correspondent Anna King reports, the visit also was part of Kennedy’s efforts to de-escalate the Cold War.

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Hanford worker Bill McCullough remembers Sept. 26, 1963 clearly when President Kennedy came to visit.Bill McCullough: “It was a very hot day, and we hit bumper to bumper traffic.”

His 1958 Chevrolet Nomad was stuck behind a long line of cars. No wind. No A.C. The whole family was roasting: He, his wife and six children – two of which were twins, just four months old.

Bill McCullough: “We never believed too much in babysitters, we always took our family every place.”

McCullough says it was a notable day because for the first time ever, families of Hanford workers were able to see the secretive site.

Bill McCullough: “We were just tickled to death to have the notoriety if you will. Here’s something, the first ever, ever, ever in the world to make power out of a nuclear reactor. It was an honor to be a part of it.”

John Kennedy: “It may be possible for us to find a more peaceful world. That is our intention. But I want you to know that the efforts that you have made and invested, the talents which have been at work here I think on several occasions; have contributed to the security of the United States and in a very large sense the peace of the world.”

Kennedy’s message was aimed at de-escalating the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis had just happened a year earlier. Michele Gerber is a Richland-based historian.

Michele Gerber: “He made sure we had the red telephone line, the hot line, between his office and the premier of the Soviet Union so there couldn’t be any mistakes, an accidental pushing of buttons. He was really trying to dial back the Cold War. And to become essentially a Renaissance man. Where before that he was very war-like, very hawkish.”

But dedicating this massive war machine at Hanford didn’t jive with Kennedy’s new policies. By having the N-Reactor also produce electricity, Kennedy was able to portray the reactor as something more peaceful.Michele Gerber: “So coming here was just about the turning point.”

Kennedy was assassinated just eight weeks after the Hanford visit.Historian Gerber says now 50 years later, Hanford’s a messy museum on the Northwest landscape. The nearby Columbia Generating Station still produces nuclear energy, but the N Reactor was mothballed in 1987. Most of the plutonium made on the site was to help build the nation’s arsenal for war. But Kennedy’s visit gave this nuclear town some hope of a peaceful future.